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City Hall, the Manhattan DA and the Comptroller's office have recovered millions in stolen wages since 2023, but the protections still don't reach day laborers hired informally, off the books.
- A new data-sharing pact between Mayor Zohran Mamdani, DA Alvin Bragg and DCWP Commissioner Samuel Levine is expanding enforcement even as fear of deportation pushes complaints down.
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Worker centers in Queens and Brooklyn want the City Council to fund hiring halls, require contractor licensing checks and guarantee wage recovery without immigration status becoming leverage.
NEW YORK — City Council members and worker advocates are pressing to close what they describe as a persistent gap in New York's labor protections: legal cover for day laborers, the largely Latino and often undocumented workforce that staffs much of the city's construction and landscaping work. Prosecutors, city agencies and neighborhood worker centers all point to the same pattern — wage-theft complaints keep surfacing from immigrant crews on job sites from Queens to the Bronx.
